From one of our most admired writers: a collection of stories set mainly in the fertile imaginative landscape of the American West, written with the terse lyricism, cinematic detail, and wry humor that have become Sam Shepard’s trademarks.A man traveling down Highway 90 West gets trapped alone overnight inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant, where he is tormented by an endless loop of Shania Twain songs on the overhead sound system. A wandering actor returns to his hometown against hi...

Austin, working on his Hollywood screenplay, is disturbed by the arrival of his estranged brother, Lee, just returned from three months in the desert. During a brief spell of uneasy cohabitation in their absent mother's house, Lee employs himself as a door-to-door burglar before killing his brother's film idea by pitching his own to Austin's producer. But Lee is no writer and the brothers must strike a deal, escalating sibling rivalry to fever pitch in the blazing Californian heat....

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” SelectionThe ride to the tiny village in Mexico where he’s due to film has not been easy. The actor has to first put up with Gunther, a maniac German driver in a tuxedo, the Narcos who insist on excavating the contents of their car, the customs official in Mexico who sends him back across the border, and an embittered woman in the Mexican consulate for whom he must play Spencer Tracy.From the Pulitzer Prize-winner, “the greatest playwrig...

The first work of long fiction from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright—a tour de force of memory, mystery, death, and life.This searing, extraordinarily evocative narrative opens with a man in his house at dawn, surrounded by aspens, coyotes cackling in the distance as he quietly navigates the distance between present and past. More and more, memory is overtaking him: in his mind he sees himself in a movie-set trailer, his young face staring back at him in a mir...

In A Particle of Dread, Sam Shepard takes one of the most famous plays in history—Oedipus Rex—and transforms it into a modern American classic. In this telling, Oedipus, King of Thebes, prophesized to kill his father and marry his mother, alternates between his classical identity and that of contemporary “Otto.” His wife (and true mother), Jocasta, is also called Jocelyn, and his antagonist (and true father) is split into three characters, Laius, Larry, and Langos. Two pr...

The final work from the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, actor, and musician, drawn from his transformative last daysIn searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard’s extraordinary narrative leaps off the page with its immediacy and power. It tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces, before our rapt eyes, his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more depende...

When Roscoe, a 65-year-old Cervantes scholar, runs off with a young woman named Sally, he decides to stay a while in her family home. Soon he discovers that Sally’s house—once inhabited by James Dean; perched precariously over the San Fernando valley—is filled with secrets, sadness, and haunted women who cannot leave themselves or anyone else in peace. From Lucy, Sally’s suspicious sister, to Mable, their Shakespeare-quoting invalid mother, to Elizabeth, Mable’s lovely and mysteriously mut...

Motel Chronicles reveals the fast-moving and sometimes surprising world of the man behind the plays that have made Sam Shepard a living legend in the theater.Shepard chronicles his own life birth in Illinois, childhood memories of Guam, Pasadena and rural Southern California, adventures as ranch hand, waiter, rock musician, dramatist and film actor. Scenes from this book form the basis of his play Superstitions, and of the film (directed b...

In Fool For Love, situated at a seedy motel on the edge of the Mojave Desert, transient lovers May and Eddie spin around in a room in a relentless struggle for power and truth. Through recollections and dreams, multiple versions of a fierce and fatal love story are told.The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife, another kind of love story in the form of a comic operetta, takes a distaff view of the Southwest's legendary cowpuncher and his mate Sl...

It's a curious homecoming for Vince, the son nobody seems to remember. Violence is never far from the surface as his unexpected return uncovers a deep, dark secret that triggers catastrophe in Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize winning Buried Child.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:Hale Appleman as VinceTom Bower as DodgeJohn Getz as Father DewisAmy Madigan as HalieRobert Parsons as TildenJeff Perry as BradleyMadeline Z...

Pulitzer-Prize winner Sam Shepard’s classic comedy is a story of estranged brothers Austin and Lee. Shepard compares and contrasts the reality of the two brothers by forcing them to come to terms with each other, with themselves, and with family.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Dean Cameron, Alfred Molina, Charlotte Rae and Francis Guinan.

This collection shares decades of correspondence between the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one of his closest friends—including personal photos.One of America's leading dramatists, as well as an accomplished actor, screenwriter, and director, Sam Shepard's legacy includes immortal plays like True West and Buried Child, as well as memorable film roles, including his Academy Award-nominated performance in The Right Stuff. Though She...